#like something about the mindflayer being a metaphor for karen being a metaphor for the whole process of grooming and eventually sa

[ickypuppi3]

there’s something about the events leading up to billy being flayed that i can’t stop thinking about

like you’ve got this 17 year old who gets sent out to look for his little sister and he winds up at a much older woman’s house where he essentially has to flirt with her to get the information he needs and she reciprocates, all while knowing he’s underage

then the whole situation at the byers happens and no one sees it the way billy does, no one except for him seems to realise that it’s fucking weird for steve to be in the middle of nowhere with a group of kids while lying about it, no one believes billy and he still comes out worse in the end with him being even more isolated than he already was

and then you move onto season 3 and you have the first episode where a newly 18 year old billy is introduced by being sexualised and objectified by a group of women way older than him, karen included, and it’s made obvious that they had to have learnt his work schedule by the way they talk and that they do this often which.. yeah

then billy goes up to karen and she reciprocates his flirting once again and agrees to meet up with him later with the full intention of having sex with him out at some motel somewhere, despite knowing his age

and it’s so wild to me that all of this predatory behaviour is what actually lead to billy crashing his car - he was literally on his way to see karen when it happened, that’s the only reason he was ever there - and that all of this grooming is essentially what lead to billy being attacked in such a brutal way that is so reminiscent of sa

then there’s the scene after he gets dragged to the basement where he manages to call 911 and he doesn’t answer when asked what his emergency is because he doesn’t know what to say/doesn’t think he’ll even be believed which is all too common among victims

and then you circle back to the night at the byers, the night where billy’s seen as irrational for thinking anything’s off, where he ends up being the person ‘in the wrong’ and where all of that happened right after karen started being predatory towards him and the first time he was (unknowingly) in a situation relating to the upside down

i have a lot of thoughts

something about the chain of events leading up to billy being flayed, about how everything is so interconnected and how that works when you’re looking at it in this specific way

something about grooming, something about victims not being believed, something about billy in particular never being believed and people blaming things on how he acts rather than seeing that the way he acts is a direct result of things that have happened to him

something about how he’s immediately isolated after the fight at the byers, something about how isolated he is after he’s attacked, the way his demeanour changes when he leaves karen’s house, how his behaviour seems to change after the byers, and how his behaviour changes completely once he’s attacked

how all of it fits this allegory, right from the start

#yes his reaction afterwards but also the events leading up to it #billy hargrove #cw grooming #cw assault #cw sa mention #yeah i’m still on this #like something about the mindflayer being a metaphor for karen being a metaphor for the whole process of grooming and eventually sa #something about how abuse victims are more likely to have something like this happen #something about not being able to deal with the after affects and no one helping #something about how experiences like that isolate you #and the fact billy quite literally kills himself at the end #idk call me crazy but it’s there #i could go into the whole ‘it’s like a shadow’ thing #considering my therapist and i literally had a whole conversation about how you can see shit that isn’t there due to trauma #like your brain is so stressed that it makes up something to be scared of #it’s all there ! #and then it’s like #the fact i know they didn’t do it on purpose #considering they use the whole karen billy situation as a funny #and yk it’s the duffers #really hate them for that #if you see any spelling mistakes no you don’t #does this make sense? i hope it makes sense #it’s one of those things that’s been stuck in my brain and that whole talk yesterday brought it back full force